Last Night’s Heartwarming How I Met Your Mother Hints at Heartbreak to Come

Last night’s episode of How I Met Your Mother saw a lot of loose ends tied up. That’s the very best thing a show with so many long-running jokes and callbacks can do at this point. Get it all out of the way so we can really focus on the characters in the final episodes. So we got a final Robin Sparkles reference with “Sandcastles in the Sand” as the wedding music, another “nobody asked you Patrice,” and, of course, the final slap.

Those little moments are satisfying for longtime fans of the show, but just like the perfectly executed catch-up with all the side characters at the end of last week, that sort of inside humor would get in the way of a really great finale episode. Most importantly, the show really pulled off the impossible this year by creating a lovable, memorable character in The Mother. When she showed up last night to intercept Robin’s Runaway Bride moment, it was a relief. She’s a great, wry, fun, and funny character, not some Stella, Karen, or Zoey that doesn’t quite fit. With Robin zooming into her last night, she’s now met all of the most important people in Ted’s life. She’s already known and loved by the people we’ve known and loved for 9 years. That was an almost impossible hurdle, and the show cleared it.

So with How They Met Your Mother over and done with, what’s left to accomplish? Obviously, Ted and The Mother need to meet. We need to learn her name. What else will the two-hour finale have in store for us? We’ve been floating the idea that The Mother dies for a few weeks now. The show is certainly hinting at some tragedy in the future. Even more distressing was last week’s theory that after The Mother’s death, Robin and Ted find each other again. That is the absolute worst ending I could think of for a number of reasons, but last night’s episode rekindled that concern.

Last night was presumably as much about Barney and Robin’s journey as it was about Ted’s. (And we’ll get to Teddy Westside.) The two of them finally found a core of honesty that, so far, their relationship had been missing. Which is a lovely message, and a fitting end for Barney’s story. But what did Barney do up on that dais? Right after coming clean about the ring bear? He lied. He lied to Robin about the flower gorilla. It was a funny moment, and maybe that’s all it was. A great visual gag. But it undermines the idea that Robin and Barney have found their bedrock. What did Robin say? Legendary was just another way of saying “lie”?

It’s one thing if Barney and Robin don’t last. It’s disappointing, but realistic. But if Robin and Ted get back together at any point it will cheapen Ted’s journey. Last night was old Schmosby’s finest moment. Robin offered herself to him and he was finally, legitimately able to let her go. To go back to that, even after many happy years of marriage to The Mother, would be a huge loss for that character’s progression.

And I want to see Ted with this Mother, and not just because they created a character who is Ted in female form. (Mosby boys shout out!)

But because he earned this. It’s not about how Ted met The Mother. It’s about when. After years of frustrating stagnation and unrealistic romanticism, Ted’s finally grown up. He’s ready for her. He might have blown it earlier, with Robin looming too large in his rearview. But he’s right where he needs to be, and when he needs to be there. For that journey to become merely a sidetrack on his way back to Robin blows everything apart. It’s possibly that we’ll get a very straightforward ending, and that the tragedy hinted at is not to come. Or that Barney and Robin will have their happily ever after. But in a television landscape where show-runners increasingly feel the burden of pulling off a “clever” or “unexpected” finale, I’m worried Bays and Thomas have something mighty, and mightily disappointing, up their sleeves.